That was the nicest title I could come up with after reading this new bit of stupidity from John Stapleford of the brain dead CRI. Titled What role does government aid play in elections?, we find Stapleford trying to gin up some numerical proof for Mitt Romney’s claim that Obama won because he gave out gifts to key voter groups. And as usual for Stapleford, he produces a ton of numbers that aren’t sourced anywhere, counting on readers not to notice and counting on readers to not ask questions about the numbers he provides. In other words, it is the usual CRI bullshit. And I want to know how he gets paid for this. Seriously. And explain to me how it is that wingnut welfare — which Stapleford is clearly a beneficiary of — isn’t it’s own gift to the angry white people being paid to push this bullshit to people who really need better information than this. Because I’d bet ALOT OF MONEY that the number of wingnut welfare recipients that voted for Mitt Romney approaches 100%.

If people generally vote their self-interest, has the rapid run-up in government transfer programs drawn black and Latino voters disproportionately to the Democratic party and its platform of larger government? And, if so, will this continue in the years ahead?

The answer to both questions is yes.

This is how the piece starts. Notice that he only has issues with black and brown people voting their self-interests and he presumes that those self-interests prioritize government transfer programs. I dare you to find where Stapleford presumes that white (republican) people voting their self-interests are largely responsible for the fiscal straights that we find ourselves in now. These are the people who have been insisting on tax cuts, paying for wars on a credit card, adding new entitlements (medicare Part D) that were not paid for and that they never had any plan to pay for. The crash of the credit card economy these folks built is the reason why there has been a run-up in government transfer payments — because this crash put alot of people out of work and out of their houses. Although it is easier for Stapleford and his audience to believe that it is because a bunch of black and brown people decided to sit on their couches all day. And easier for him to ignore that there are plenty of white people engaged with government transfer programs as well. The racism here (yes, I said it) is the understood presumption that black and brown people care more about their government programs than they do about actually working. There are people of all colors who would be delighted to kick back and just collect a check, but MOST people want to work. Much of the population currently unemployed are people who built stuff, provided office support of all kinds, drove your goods from one place to another or any of the many jobs that were shed because Republicans drove the economy off of a cliff. Some of those unemployed people are teachers or firefighters who worked for governments who needed to downsize in order to balance their budgets. Who cares what color they are — these are human resources that are well and truly wasted because demand in the economy has dried up.

More than 40 percent of Delaware’s black community is enrolled in Medicaid and 57 percent of the Latino community.

This is more of the unsourced claims here, but look at that sentence and think about what else is part of this narrative. If these numbers are correct (and that is a pretty big if), then there are plenty of white people enrolled in Medicaid too. Yet there isn’t a single statistic about white people in Delaware participating in “government transfer payments”.

The rest of this article is engaged in building his strawman that somehow black and brown people who are on Medicaid or whatever the program is have a stake in government transfer payments. Tell that to the people affected by Superstorm Sandy who are busily building their federal government spending wish lists. But still, the majority of Medicaid expenditures are on behalf of the disabled and the elderly. The Kaiser people don’t break this down by race, but the only reason Stapleford does is to make sure that his angry white readers get the picture that it is black and brown people who are the cause of Big Government. Because this:

According to the Delaware Population Consortium, over this decade Delaware’s black population will grow twice as fast as the white population and Latinos will grow seven times as fast as whites.

And? The unstated threat here is that all of these black and brown people will grow up to sit on their couches all day while productive white people pay taxes in order to fund this laziness. It is the dog whistle of this entire piece. And it is just a stupid as the rest of his piece. Because while it is true that all Delaware kids will need all of the schooling they can get to be in this economy, an assessment that cared about the future would have called for better educational resources rather than just whistle away that more lazy colored people are on the way.

Shame on you John Stapleford and shame on the News Journal for publishing this bit of bamboozlement rather than add something to the discussion.

The “logic” behind this piece is so lame it wouldn’t pass muster as a high-school report.

If black and brown people are voting their self-interest, why are so many of the middle-class blacks and browns also voting Democratic? If we assume (we shouldn’t, but I’m just playing along with the passes-for-thought contentions Dr. John starts from) that the whites who vote D are doing so because they’re poor, what explains middle-class minorities voting against their self-interest?

Further, if he wants this taken seriously as analysis, he needs to provide far more detail. To what extent does the rest of the middle-class vote its self-interest? To what extent do the well-off vote their self-interest?

In short, the contention he starts with is never proved. He has not established that ANYBODY votes their self-interest, so he can’t claim that’s why minorities vote as they do.

Now let’s see if any Delaware Republicans distance themselves from this “analysis.”

it’s funny that what they are saying isnt exactly false… it is just a really really really shitty way of saying it.
let me explain. expanding Medicare, pushing for universal health insurance, forbidding a boss from interfering in their employee’s reproductive decisions… all these things are things that Obama and the democrats ran on. All these things improve the lives of ALL people. Because this country was run on racism and hate for so many years, minority communities are typically less well-off. Not because they are lazy, not because they are any less capable…. but because the deck has been stacked so severely against them. A black girl born today STILL has a harder life ahead of her than a white boy…. even if that white boy is born to a poorer family. New laws, and the dems platform levels the playing field, thus her parents… and millions of other people like them will vote for the party that will improve their lives. I know i do. “which decision will make my future better”
The republicans are absolutely right. Minorities, women, enlightened straight white men…. will all definitely vote for the democrats because our lives are better with their polices. The margin of victory for Dems will grow because peckerwoods are a shrinking demographic, where as everyone else is growing. Everything Stapleford and Romney and O’reily have said about a “changing America” and why “those people” vote D is 100% correct. It is just said in a Bigot Dialect. I think it needs to be embraced! Hell yes this platform and agenda is aimed at improving the lives of most Americans. Hell yes if you vote for these people your life will improve. that is the point of elections and government. The other side to their hate-coin is that they offer absolutely nothing positive to the “non traditional” Americans they are so afraid of. They also admit that in their “analysis”. They call it “gifts” we call it “delivering on your campaign promise”

“Presumptuous” is not indicative of the hidden invective, “misleading” is too kind, “manipulative” implies intellectual wherewithal, “absurd” gets us a little closer to the reality of the content of this thesis but implies an ignorance excuse so we are left with few adjectives to describe Mr. Stapleford’s fictional dissertation other than “immoral”, “unconscionable”, and “abhorrent”. (please fill in your own suggestions). I personally favor “unamerican”
as appropriately descriptive of Mr. Stapleford’s theory/explanation/tirade of ignorance. Here’s hoping Caesar Rodney’s heirs file a defamation of character lawsuit against CRI for abusing the family name.

But CRI is gospel when they put out bogus crap on Karen. They were full of shit right down to the garbage GPS claims on her movements. But hey you guys all loved it. They are full of shit now they were full of shit then.

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